“The basic concept is that V2X is vehicle-to-everything,” says Andy Chappell, Senior Programme Manager at Commsignia.
“So vehicles can talk to other vehicles, they can talk to roadside infrastructure such as traffic lights, or they can talk to pedestrians or other vulnerable road users, and they can also talk to the network. And, obviously, they can talk to other cars, as well.”
The idea of cars, infrastructure, pushbikes, pedestrians, and other road users all sending information about themselves to each other to improve safety and efficiency can feel like pure science fiction.
However, according to Chappell, the reality is closer than you think.
Creating the Building Blocks
“There are a lot of acronyms,” says Chappell, laughing, “so I’ll try and avoid them but pick me up if I use one!”
“There are lots of things V2X can do, and that’s part of the problem – which do you do first? It also requires cooperation between the OEMs who are manufacturing the cars, the road infrastructure, and the road operators – and that’s probably the first time that all these guys have needed to cooperate. Previously, you could just manufacture a car, test it, sell it, no problem. Same with road operators, they can put traffic lights in, test them, and get on with it.”
However, Chappell explains that, as V2X technology starts to roll out – both in the UK and around the world – the various pieces of the roadway jigsaw will need to be aligned.
“There have been an awful lot of demos and proofs of concepts done all over the world on V2X, and they’ve proven that you can get messages into the car and displayed them to a driver. Similarly, they’ve proven that you can get messages and data back from the car and use it in the road infrastructure. But it’s now about starting to implement it.”
Commsignia has been working on solving V2X problems since 2012 and is currently the largest dedicated V2X company in the world.
“We have three or four different products so we make, manufacture, and sell roadside units. We also make and manufacture onboard units for cars, these are largely for tests – they’re not mass-produced for retrofits at the moment,” explains Chappell.
“We also have a V2X protocol software stack which we license to OEMs for their cars and other devices. And, finally, we have a product called Commsignia Central which manages the estate of roadside units and virtual roadside units through cellular providers, allowing road operators to deploy messages and receive data back.”
The company has been working with Zenzic, an organisation dedicated to bringing self-driving cars to the UK, as well as Vodafone, Nokia, UTAC Millbrook, and Horiba Mira, to operate testbeds for different use cases and scenarios.
These test cases often look to investigate how V2X can be built in the UK.
“V2X has three different methods of communicating two of them are short-range: one is called DSRC, called ITS-G5 in the US and Europe, and the other is wifi-based short-range comms across 200, 300, 400 metres,” explains Chappell.
“There’s another version of that short-range protocol using the same frequency bands, but using cellular-based radio technology, rather than wifi.”
“There’s a big argument about which one is better, China has gone cellular, the US started with DSRC but is starting to move to cellular. Europe largely uses DSRC but I don’t think there’s a clear decision of which way it’s going.”
Chappell says, however, that he thinks most countries will end up using a mixture of both technologies in the future.
“I think the real answer comes when you start to look at the cellular V2X that we did with Vodafone and Nokia. Even if it is cellular, you don’t need a SIM card, it’s just broadcast,” he explains.
“What we’ve done with Vodafone and Nokia is you need a SIM card, and you’re transmitting basically to the standard cellular network.”
This, according to Chappell, means that there are very small latencies and wide-scale coverage. The DSRC-based systems, meanwhile, will require a huge amount of extra infrastructure in the form of roadside units.
Seeing Around Corners
So far, this is all very technical. Talk about communications protocols and latencies is unlikely to get consumers motivated to ask for V2X technology in their cars – in fact, it might do the opposite.
What will interest drivers, however, is the “better-than-adoption rate impact” that V2X promises.
“There are probably 100 or so use cases,” says Chappell. “But they are categorised into a number of different things. For example, V2X isn’t necessarily limited by line-of-sight.”
“For example, if you’re following a bus and the car in front of the bus brakes heavily, like an emergency brake, and you don’t see it, you end up in the back of the bus.
“But, if you have V2X, you can be informed about that emergency braking and it gives you more time to react. And this also potentially demonstrates that you don’t need a huge V2X penetration or adoption rate in vehicles to start having a better-than-adoption rate impact.
“If you’re following a car that is V2X-enabled, and it has more time to react, you also have more time to react – even if you don’t have V2X. I’ve seen studies that would show 10-20% adoption rates having better-than-adoption rate impacts on safety.
“There are other use cases such as blind spots. So, if there is a car in your blind spot, then you can get a warning. To turn that into a reality, if you’re cycling in London, and you’re on the inside of a truck about to turn left, it would be fantastic to know that the driver knows you’re there.
Fortunately, Chappell says that rather than giving drivers and cyclists extra screens to worry about, V2X can be achieved without too much invasive tech.
“You don’t need to have a display on your bike, it can just be your bike sending messages and that’s perfectly possible with e-bikes, e-scooters because they have a platform with electricity.”
Similarly, Chappell says, information about roadworks or slippery conditions could be transmitted directly to drivers, as well as information on variable speed limits on smart motorways or queuing traffic on different routes.
What Happens Next?
EuroNCAP, the company that tests and issues safety ratings for cars in Europe, has mandated that if cars from 2027 onwards do not have V2X installed, then they cannot receive the full five-star award.
“We know that those five stars influence the buying public.,” says Chappell.
In his mind, emphasising safety is key to ensuring that consumers understand the benefits that V2X can bring to their cars and want to have it installed.
“If you look at the dashcam market,” he says, “the last figures I saw were that the global market is worth around £2.9 billion. So, if we get the price right, people will buy the safety.”
“I don’t think we’ll see all of the use cases supported initially. And I don’t think we’ll see all of the cars having it. I don’t think we’ll see all of the road operators operating the same services. But I think it will be incrementally building.
“In North America, AASHTO says that 86% of all road traffic accidents have some form of human error,” says Chappell. “They believe that V2X has the ability to reduce or mitigate the impact of up to 80% of those.”
“In Europe, the number of accidents has come down and is fairly stable, but the one that keeps going up is with vulnerable road users – cyclists and scooters – and trying to protect those guys is one of the key things V2X will do.”
Chappell also promises a range of knock-on economic benefits including “fewer accidents, better flowing traffic, and less pollution.”
There are already real-world tests in action, as well. In fact, while the Volkswagen Golf 8 is the only car in Britain with V2X installed, there are some 90 cars models on the roads in China with V2X technology.
“The US is for me is leading in this at the moment,” says Chappell.
“In Detroit, they’re using V2X to provide priority to certain vehicles – they’ve chosen snowploughs, believe it or not. They have done a couple of things in Atlanta. If the express buses are behind schedule, they can give them priority at intersections just by holding a light green for a few seconds longer or turning it green a few seconds earlier – it only takes them three junctions to get the bus back on track.”
For Chappell, the benefits of V2X are clear but it remains to be seen just how quickly it will roll out to users. Hopefully, given the safety benefits, it should be relatively swift.
Keyword: Seeing Around Corners – How Commsignia is Using V2X to Improve Safety